ly fifty men in the room. As if by instinct each of
them already knew on what a slender thread one man's life hung. Hawk,
the quickest and surest of Laramie's friends, stood ten paces away, up
the bar, but the silence was such that he could hear every deliberate
word. Glasses, half-emptied, had been set noiselessly down,
discussions had ceased, every eye was centered on two men and every ear
strained. A few spectators tiptoed out into the office. Others that
tried to pass through the swinging front-door screen into the street
found a crowd already peering intently in through the open baize.

"Tom," resumed Laramie, in measured seriousness, "it's not you 'n' me
can't get on--it's men here has made trouble 'tween you and me, Tom.
You 'n' me rode this range when we didn't have but one blanket atween
us--didn't we, Tom?" he demanded in loud tones.

Stone, in drunken irresolution, uncocked his gun but held it steady.
"That's all right, Laramie," he growled.

"Did we quarrel then?" demanded Laramie, boisterously. "I'm asking
you, Tom, did you 'n' me quarrel then?"

"When a man can't turn in with Harry Van Horn an' Barb Doubleday,"
grumbled Stone, "it's time for him to quit this country." His revolver
clicked again; the hammer went up.

Laramie regarded him with sobering amazement: "Who told you I wouldn't
turn in with Barb Doubleday?" he exclaimed loudly. "Who told you that?"

"Harry Van Horn told me."

Tenison tried to interpose. "You shut up, Tenison," was the answering
growl from Stone. But Tenison stuck to it till the hammer came down.
It was only for a moment--the next instant a score of breathless men
heard the click of the gun as it was cocked again.

"Why," demanded Laramie, more cool-headed than his friends, drawn-faced
and tense about him, cooler far than his maudlin words implied, and
still fighting for a forlorn chance, "why didn't Harry Van Horn tell me
to turn in with a friend--why didn't he tell me to turn in with you,
Tom Stone--with a man I rode and bunked with? Why did they make you
their scapegoat, Tom? You've got me all right; I know that. But what
about you? You can't get ten feet. Abe Hawk's right back of you,
waitin' for you now. They'd dump us into the same hole, Tom. You
don't want to go into the same hole with me, do you? Let's talk it
over."

The rambling plea sounded so reasonable it won a brief reprieve from
Stone.

"Don't uncock your gun till I'm through, Tom," urged